Grilled or pan-fried meat sausages are one of the most delicious snacks for beer, as evidenced by the menu of the world's largest "beer" festival - Oktoberfest. This time we will understand the general intricacies of making sausages at home, and also consider the simplest and fastest recipe for homemade sausages in the gut in a meat grinder.

Of course, each cook has his own recipes, subtleties and tricks: someone likes minced meat dishes, someone likes well ground meat, someone puts a lot of spices, while others manage with salt and black pepper. Therefore, to begin with, we will simply consider the general principles that will help you prepare juicy, satisfying and tasty sausages at home.

Meat selection

Almost any meat is suitable for homemade sausages: chicken, pork, beef, lamb, duck, turkey, etc. One type of meat can be used, or several types can be mixed in different proportions, depending on taste preferences. So, fatty pork is often mixed with beef, and poultry is most often used in its pure form or with the addition of lard for greater juiciness.

When choosing pork, you need to pay attention to lard: if it is tasty, fragrant and with a thin skin, then the meat from this animal will also be of good quality. When choosing lamb, you should look at the veins: if they are soft, then the meat will be quite tender.

If dry meat was chosen for sausages, with a minimum of fat, then you can add cream or ground lard to make them more juicy.

Cooling

Before starting cooking, it is advisable to cool the meat cut into small pieces and the meat grinder a little in the freezer, which will provide better grinding, and also help preserve the taste of the meat. The meat grinder can be put in the freezer both an hour before cooking, and in advance, at night. The meat should not be frozen: it should freeze on the edge, and the center will remain soft.

Grinding

As soon as everything you need is pulled out of the freezer, you should immediately start, and you need to grind as quickly as possible, while loading the meat in small portions. During grinding, it is not necessary to force the pieces into the neck, as this may violate the consistency of the future minced meat. The ideal degree of filling is ¼ of the volume of the neck.

kneading

After grinding, you should get minced meat with a visible texture. Spices and other additives are added to the finished mass, if they are provided for in the recipe, after which the minced meat must be kneaded with your hands so that it becomes denser and excess air leaves it. You can check the taste of the resulting minced meat by frying a small amount in a pan. You should fry until cooked, but you should not wait for a golden crust, as it will slightly “overshadow” the main taste of the product. After the “test”, you can add the missing ingredients to the minced meat and knead it again.

shell

Today it is not difficult to buy a casing for homemade sausages in a store; it can be natural or artificial. Natural - these are specially processed pork, beef or mutton intestines. They can vary in diameter, length, intestinal section of the animal. When choosing intestines, you should pay attention to their characteristics: there should be no nodules, large holes, greasy smell, the color should be light, without gray shades. Beef casings are stronger than pork casings, so they may be easier to work with if you are cooking sausages for the first time. But lamb is more suitable for boiled sausages and ham. However, the choice is yours.

Before use, the intestines should be rinsed with warm water and soaked in water at 20-25 ° C for an average of up to 2 hours (freshly preserved can be soaked for only 5-10 minutes). Then they are washed in water (30-35 o C). Next, the intestines are disassembled into segments and their quality is checked by passing water through them. If there are holes in the stomach, then it is in these places that the intestine should be cut into separate parts.

Artificial casings are also of various types, including cellulose, polyamide, protein. For homemade sausages, collagen casings are well suited, which are made from protein raw materials and are edible. To prepare the collagen "intestine" should be soaked in water (with the addition of 1 teaspoon of salt per 1 liter of water) 35-40 ° C for 2-3 minutes, then rinse with running water.

Filling the shell, forming sausages

When the minced meat and casing are prepared, you can begin the process of forming homemade sausages. A simple way is to change the nozzle on the meat grinder to a special cone, put the intestine on it. You need to tie a knot only after you start serving minced meat, otherwise an air bubble will form. As for density, the golden mean should be maintained: a tightly stuffed sausage can burst at high temperatures, and voids will form if the density is insufficient. You can find the optimal degree of density empirically 😉

Tip: If you doubt the density of the stuffing or you could not avoid the appearance of air bubbles, then it is better to prick the sausages with a thin needle or a toothpick so that steam comes out during cooking.

The second option is in case you do not have such a special nozzle or even a meat grinder. A cropped top from a plastic bottle will help. It can be fixed in a meat grinder or used as a hand tool, pushing the minced meat through the neck and adjusting the density of stuffing.

Tip: If you want to make one large sausage, you can immediately lay it in a spiral, if it is small, then you should leave a sufficient gap between portions of minced meat so that it is convenient to tie or twist the intestine. You can tie with cotton twine.

Heat treatment

At home, sausages can be fried, boiled and baked, as well as a combination of these processing methods. With any method, a certain temperature regime should be observed: in order to keep them juicy, they should be cooked at a temperature of no more than 80 ° C.

In a pan, fry over medium heat, first on one side, then, slightly increasing the heat, on the other side. The indicator of readiness is the clear juice that stands out when the sausage is punctured. During frying, you can try putting a sprig of rosemary in the pan and periodically remove it from the fat and run it over the sausages (this will give the dish a subtle rosemary flavor).

In the oven, you can cook sausages both on an open baking sheet and in foil. In the first case, you should periodically water them with fat or oil so that they are not dry, in the second, unfold the foil by the end of cooking so that a golden crust appears.

Tip: Instead of vegetable oil for frying and baking sausages, you can use beef fat, it will make the dish more juicy and tasty.

You can cook sausages in many ways, for example, put them in slowly boiling water, turn off the heat and leave covered for 20 minutes. Boiling is often used before stewing or frying in a pan.

Spices and additives

Recipe for making homemade sausages without intestines

If you don’t have a natural or artificial casing at hand, you can cook homemade sausages in cling film, foil, parchment, etc. For example, let's take a recipe with minced meat from a mixture of chicken fillet and pork with the addition of eggs, baked in foil. You can use other combinations of meat and their proportions, as well as add spices and other ingredients at your discretion.

Ingredients:

• Pork (tenderloin) - 1 kg
• Chicken fillet - 0.7 kg
• Pork fat - 0.2 kg
• Eggs - 3-4 pieces
• Starch - 4 tbsp. spoons
• Garlic - a few cloves
• Salt, pepper, spices

Cooking:

1. Beat the eggs in a bowl, add spices, chopped garlic (pass it through a garlic press or finely chop), salt. Then we begin to gradually add starch, stirring constantly and avoiding the formation of lumps.

2. We make minced chicken fillet, pork and lard. If you want a more gentle grind, then take a nozzle with small holes. You can also make "chopped" sausages, for which you just need to cut the meat and lard into very small cubes. Put the minced meat or chopped ingredients in a bowl with eggs, mix well until a homogeneous mass is formed.

3. We take the foil, cut it into identical pieces of about 20x30 cm. Spread the minced meat with a spoon on the shiny, mirror side of the foil and form sausages of the desired shape and size, after which we begin to wrap like candy. We twist the edges tightly so that there is no air gap between the minced meat and the foil. It is desirable to twist tighter than shown in the photo.

4. We heat the oven to 180 ° C, send a baking sheet with sausages there and detect it for 1 hour. Homemade sausages without intestines can be served hot or cold, with a side dish and simply fragrant bread.